%run jam_theme.py
import accidents as a
import precinct_analysis as pa
import three_one_one as three
chart = a.plot_bar(df)
chart
Although it's home to an avid cycling community, the streets of NYC have not been a particularly safe space to ride. This past year saw nominally fewer injuries to cyclists as a result of collisions with motor vehicles, however, it also saw the most deaths in the past 6 years -- for as long as this number has been published in open data. A 250% increase in deaths over the previous year led the cycling community to demand change and forced the mayor to respond. The following charts explore how the cyclist community and the city government, and if their efforts are at odds and complement one another in achieving a bikeable city.
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chart1
While citizens can submit 311 tickets, also known as service requests, for a host of reasons, any mention of 311 tickets in the following charts refers to those submitted to NYPD, notifying them of a car in a bike lane. In the above chart, both the number of 311 tickets submitted by New Yorkers and the number of parking violations issued by the NYPD to cars parked in a bike lane appear to follow the same trend since January of 2017. The most notable aspect is that they both dramatically increase in the summer of 2019. Tragically, this past summer NYC cyclists suffered an unprecedented number of deaths. In response, the cyclist community urged Mayor de Blasio to act. His first response was to call upon NYPD urging them to better protect the bike lanes. He went on to designate a "mass enforcement period" during the final three weeks of July. An increase in parking violations may be part of this response, but did they also address tickets submitted by cyclists?
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chart3
It appears that additional 311 tickets does not result in longer response times for the majority of precincts. Although, with a median response time between 1 and 2 hours it's likely that the car has already left the bike lane. Several police precincts -- 9, 13, and 6 -- responded to more 311 tickets and issued more parking violations without a notable increase in response time.
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chart4
While it's clear that the NYPD resolved more 311 tickets in 2019 than they ever have, they determined that nearly 90% of all tickets did not have any observable evidence.
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chart5
There appears to be a critical number of 311 tickets that forces a response in number of parking violations. Until the number of requests breaches 300 per week, the number of violations appear to cluster between 1500 and 2000. Once above 300 tickets, we see the number of violations increase to 2,800.
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chart6
Both 2017 and 2018 exhibit similar clusters in terms of weekly 311 tickets and 311 violations. 2019 sees a dramatic increase in both.
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requests_chorpleth = bivariate.requests_choropleth(plot_requests, 'service_requests:Q')
requests_chorpleth
violations_choropleth = bivariate.violations_choropleth(plot_violations, 'violations:Q')
violations_choropleth
Given Mayor de Blasio's designation of a NYPD task force to increase patrol of bike lanes, and the NYC cyclist community's demand for change in response to the tragic deaths that occurred in summer of 2019, I wanted to determine if the efforts from each group were aligned. While the cyclists submitted 311 tickets in response to blocked bike lanes in Williamsburg, Greenpoint, and lower Manhattan, the NYPD targeted Midtown South (district 14) and the Upper West Side (district 34).